- Social network has great impacts on language learning in the study abroad context (Dewey 2017; Gautier, 2017; Isabelli-GarcÃa, 2006; Shiri, 2015).
- Ego-centric network studies suggest that study abroad students lack critical access to out-of-classroom social networks and thereby they tend to interact with other students in the same cohort (Dewey, 2013; Shiri, 2015).
- Little work has been done to examine the internal interaction of study abroad students (Paradowski et al. 2020).
- Given that prior studies focus on ego-centric networks, it also fails to examine how broad network structure shapes students’ language learning.